For years, we have been hearing news about the new-age light-based LiFi, which was proclaimed to replace the contemporary wireless data transfer protocol Wi-Fi. Now, latest reports say, it will come out of the labs and be available to all consumers via a smartphone in two years.
The UK-based pureLiFi has announced to demo its advanced Gigabit LiFi modem inside a commercial phone at the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 (February 25-28). As the name suggests, it will offer faster and also reliable security for the transfer of data wirelessly.
"The ecosystem is crying out for new spectrum and new wireless technology that will serve the global appetite for more bandwidth and digital innovation. Device manufacturers need new technology to be sure they're ready for 5G and differentiate between their competition", Alistair Banham, CEO, pureLiFi said in a statement.
"We're already in discussions with mobile phone manufacturers, demonstrating how our optical LiFi components will enable innovation in their products and transform the user experience. We've led global adoption of LiFi into critical use cases such as Government and Industry and now we're bringing the technology into every device and every light for everyone," Banham added.
LiFi: All you need to know
LiFi (Light Fidelity) understood to be invented by Harald Haas (Professor of Mobile Communications at the University of Edinburgh), is a bidirectional, high-speed OWC (Optical Wireless Communication) technology.
As per reliable reports, it offers super fast internet speed and also more secure than the current Wi-Fi standards. The LiFi make use of the LED (Light Emitting Diodes) as a medium for two-way communication enabling secure and fast data transfer.
Pros:
- To put in numbers, LiFi is said to be 100 times faster and transfer more data at extreme speed compared to Wi-Fi as light travels faster than any wave (even radio waves in Wi-Fi) in the physical world. The researchers have been able to achieve 10gbps internet speed in the lab. They also suggest that LiFi can even achieve an astronomical 224 Gbps speed. That means the users will be able to download 18 (1.5GB each) movies in just a second.
- Though LiFi waves cannot travel through walls like Wi-Fi, it is way more secure than the former. Wi-Fi routers risk getting hacked, whereas the LiFi's bi-directional data transfer technology makes it nearly impossible for the third-party device to attack users' smart devices.
- This bi-directional Li-Fi technology is said to revolutionise the IoT (Internet-of-Things), wherein people will be able to communicate to the Television, Refrigerators, Air Conditioners and other consumer electronics devices via smartphone faster and securely.
Cons:
- Since LiFi uses LED lights, the room has to be lit up at all times. The researchers say this shortcoming has been fixed as they devised a bulb that can emit light waves invisible to the human eye.
- The use of light in Li-Fi brings another dilemma. If the user's laptop is connected to Li-Fi, he/she will get disconnected if they go out of the room as light cannot travel through opaque walls.
As of now, we have no information about the phone brand in which LiFi will be demoed, but it is said to be made available in commercial phones in 2021.
